Category: Uncategorized

I suppose it’s a logical next career move for Snoop Dogg: pee-wee football coach.
I’m off to Louisiana in a few minutes — I’ll be gone for a week. Maybe I’ll actually have time to post!

Here’s how you can tell you’ve been coughing a lot for the last two weeks: when you realize you’ve pulled a muscle in your chest.

Noticed this story yesterday, from the Denver Post:
The president of the Cheyenne County school board allegedly dumped a pile of horse manure on the counter of the newspaper in Cheyenne Wells on Wednesday.
Publisher Joyce Escudero’s son Gary, who witnessed the dumping, said it happened after school board President Sam Mitchek read a front-page story in the weekly newspaper, published Wednesday, that was critical of him.
But then today I saw the follow-up story:
The pile of horse manure next to the headline “Public Denied Right to Comment” is a “personal affront” to the citizens of Cheyenne Wells, publisher Joyce Escudero said Thursday.
Escudero said she wants school board president Sam Mitchek, who admits he dumped it on the counter of the Range Ledger on Wednesday, to personally clean it up and issue a public apology.
An unrepentant Mitchek explained his actions in a telephone interview: “I felt what has been published lately has been a bunch of horse manure and that is why I went and got some.”
Asked if he felt he set a good example for youngsters, the school board president thought for a moment and said: “It probably doesn’t set a good example for kids in the school – but it lets them know I stand up for the school.”
Hold on — it’s a day later, and the newspaper is still waiting to clean up the manure? It’s day-old crusty poop now?
I’m all for standing on journalistic principle, but please, Joyce Escudero, clean up the poo! For the children!

Geez, I haven’t been doing such a great job of feeding the crabwalk.com masses of late, have I? My apologies for the unanticipated week-long hiatus. A few random thoughts.
– Flew back from El Paso Tuesday night. (And boy, are my arms tired.) One thing I like about my job is that I travel enough that trips sneak up on me now. Monday morning, I woke up and said, “Damn! I forgot! I’m going to Mexico tonight!”
– Yep, did cross the border into Mexico, my first foray into that fine nation. With my Toronto jaunt earlier this fall, my NAFTA cred is officially established. Stopped in at the Kentucky Club, which appears to be the official gringo stop in Juarez — a handful of A&M frat boys were the only other customers, as Monday Night Football played on the TV. (Juarez on a Monday night isn’t the most exciting place in the world. I walked back across the Rio Grande after about an hour.)
– Went to see the DFWbloggers last night. They’re still blogging at breakneck speeds, making me look bad.
– Canadian readers, keep an eye out for Monday’s National Post — you may see a little crabwalk goodness therein. (If not then, later in the week.)
– Two more days of work, then a week’s vacation in lovely Rayne. If my posting frequency hasn’t convinced you I’ve been too busy lately, trust me — I need a vacation.

Want to feel old, longtime web surfers? Salon is turning seven years old. Seven years old. Whodathunkit?
I also had an image of my own mortality today when searching my Eudora archives brought up an email I’d sent in September 1993. Man, turning 27’s been rough.

I’m headed to El Paso for the first time next week. Any suggestions for things to do?

If you watched SportsCenter last night, you may have seen l’il ol’ me during the Mavs-Blazers highlights. I’m the guy in the grey shirt, just to the right of the Mavs basket on the floor level in the second half.
One of the perks of being a Big Brother is that folks like the Mavericks give tickets so you can take your kid places. Unfortunately for Bocephus (as we call my Little Bro here on crabwalk), he had to cancel at the last minute, leaving me with a free ticket. Matt was the lucky one.
Face value of these two seats: $1,000. Seriously.
Highlights: The oft-maligned Rasheed Wallace playing basketball catch during a timeout with a seven-year-old. Several Mavs Dancers. Red Dot whoopin’ up on his brothers Blue, Yellow, and Green. And of course, the Mavs winning, 82-73.

In a way, it’s for the best that the Senate races didn’t end up being closer nationwide. If it was currently 49 Dems, 49 GOP, 1 Independent, the runoff race in Louisiana, my home state, would be absolutely crazy. Still, lots of reporters are descending on my old turf for the next few weeks. I predict a average net gain of 10 pounds in the D.C. press corps.
The Times-Picayune has a great set of advice to those reporters. Among the hints:
– “Please try to avoid food metaphors when discussing Louisiana. Howard Fineman of Newsweek referred to our open primary as a ‘jambalaya primary’ — whatever that’s supposed to mean — in an interview on MSNBC. You also may be tempted to throw in words like “cayenne,” “Tabasco” and “spicy” when you’re talking about our politics to a national audience. Please don’t.”
– “You also should keep in mind that although New Orleans has a French history, it’s wrong to think of it as a Cajun city. Despite what you may have seen in some movies and TV shows, people in New Orleans don’t usually call each other ‘cher.'”
– “New Orleans is in the South, but not really of the South. Except for “y’all,” you’re not likely to find much in the way we talk that sounds like what you’d hear in Mississippi or Alabama or on reruns of ‘The Andy Griffith Show.'”
– “But if you go north of, say, Alexandria, you may come across areas that seem more ‘Southern’ to you. Northeastern Louisiana may seem like a westward extension of Mississippi, while northwestern Louisiana may seem like eastern Texas. Boy-howdy, you might even find some people up there who cheer for the Dallas Cowboys instead of the Saints. We are constantly looking to see if there’s any legal way to revoke the Louisiana citizenship of Cowboys fans.”

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on a Dallas-area school that (close your ears, children) kicks a little booty. It’s the third story in my Schools That Work series.
By the way, I’ve been crazy busy the last month or two, and I’m way behind in my email correspondance. My apologies if I owe you a missive or eight. All I can promise is that my life is supposed to let up briefly in a couple weeks, and I’ll be better then.

Fools! You decide not to go to the Calexico show, and you miss a special guest appearance by Richard Buckner! Richard Buckner, singing a cover of Tom Petty’s “The Waiting,” with either very little or lots of irony! You fools!